"I love Morgan Wade"

2022-05-07 20:57:16

Skip to contentMenuMusicBioVideosTourShopSign UpRecklessDeluxe EditionLISTEN NOWApple MusicSpotifyAmazonPandoraYoutube MusiciTunesWilder Days LISTEN NOWApple MusicSpotifyAmazonPandoraYoutube MusiciTunesRecklessLISTEN NOWApple MusicSpotifyAmazonPandoraYoutube MusiciTunesMorgan Wade didn’t write to be a sensation, for critical acclaim or massive concert tours.She wrote to speak her truth, to save her own life – and perhaps throw a rope to othersstruggling with the weight of a world moving too fast, loves where you fall too hard andnights that, good or bad, seem to go on forever.2021 saw Reckless, her Thirty Tigers/now Sony Music Nashville debut, and lead single “WilderDays” topping critical lists from Rolling Stone, TIME, Stereogum, New York Times, BostonGlobe, FADER, Tennessean, Whiskey Riff, Billboard, and The Boot and Taste of Country whoboth proclaimed, “a once-in-a-decade debut.” With a voice that is raw hurt, deep knowing andsomehow innocence retained, Wade wrote or co-wrote a song cycle about the reality facingteens and 20-somethings that embraced raw desire, the reality of getting high and gettingsober, the realm of crawling through the wreckage with a tough vulnerability that is assingular as the young woman from Floyd, Virginia.Read MoreRun (Official Video)Carry Me Home (Audio)When the Dirt All Settles (Audio)The Night (Audio)Through Your Eyes (Audio)Suspicious Minds (Audio)Morgan Wade - Run (Lyric Video)Morgan Wade - Matches and Metaphors (Live from Blackbird Studio) Morgan Wade - Wilder Days (Official Music Video)Morgan Wade - Wilder Days (Behind the Scenes)Morgan Wade - DON’T CRY (OFFICIAL VIDEO)Morgan Wade - Run (Lyric Video)Morgan Wade - Take Me Away (Live from Blackbird Studio)Morgan Wade - Last Cigarette (Live from Blackbird Studio)View allView lessMorgan WadeMorgan Wade didn’t write to be a sensation, for critical acclaim or massiveconcert tours. She wrote to speak her truth, to save her own life – andperhapsthrow a rope to others struggling with the weight of a world moving toofast,loves where you fall too hard and nights that, good or bad, seem to go onforever.2021 saw Reckless, her Thirty Tigers/now Sony Music Nashville debut, andleadsingle “Wilder Days” topping critical lists from Rolling Stone, TIME,Stereogum,New York Times, Boston Globe, FADER, Tennessean, Whiskey Riff, Billboard,andThe Boot and Taste of Country who both proclaimed, “a once-in-a-decadedebut.”With a voice that is raw hurt, deep knowing and somehow innocence retained,Wadewrote or co-wrote a song cycle about the reality facing teens and20-somethingsthat embraced raw desire, the reality of getting high and getting sober, therealm of crawling through the wreckage with a tough vulnerability that is assingular as the young woman from Floyd, Virginia.“I didn’t know anybody like me when I was a kid, listening to music,” sheconfesses. “That’s why I fell in love with Elvis, that raw emotion. He heldnothing back, and I loved that, so when I started writing, that’s where Iwent.I didn’t know you couldn’t. And to tell kids ‘do your own thing,’ that’s abitmuch, but if I can show them something else? That might light a fire.”The sinewy songwriter covered in ink understands striking that fire. Wade,shamed for singing at school, felt the singe. She recalls, “I’d spent solongbeing told, ‘Your voice is weird’ by other kids, and it’s such a pivotaltime.They’d say, ‘What’s wrong with you? You can play for yourself but do it athome.’“And it helps,” she knowingly concedes, “because you do it for you.”Developing her distinctly singular – turpentine and honeycomb – vocal tone,heremotional transparency suggests Etta James, Adele, Patti Griffin, Lana DelRay,St. Etienne’s Annie Clark, even Alison Krauss.With insider trade HITS proclaiming, “Imagine Kris Kristofferson as a Gen Zwoman,” The New York Times raving, “she sounds like she’s singing from thedepths of history” and FADER offering, “Wade has a voice like a jaggedblade,sharp enough to draw blood but lustrous under the light,” Reckless landedhardand true. A product of her collaboration with Sadler Vaden (guitarist inJasonIsbell + the 400 Unit) and engineer Paul Ebersold, the trio worked to keeptheguitars forward, the edges rough and her voice the star in the loose tumbleofplayers meshing on the edge of Tom Petty/Lucinda Williams’ rock & roll.Just as importantly, Vaden – who came across Wade at a music festival, wherehisguitar tech asked for a CD – recognized the power of a woman being trulyhonest.Rather than shy away from her faltering places, self-doubt or demons, thefirstthing they worked on was “The Night,” a white-knuckled account of roughemotionsand meaner addictions.The straightforward lyricist explains, “Growing up in the South, people arealways saying, ‘Well, you’re just having your feelings...’ But instead,you’rehaving a panic attack, or you’re masking something. You have to ask, ‘So,what’scausing that?’“For so long, we try to act like ‘I’m fine, you know.’ I got sober. It’s allhunky dory,” she continues. “But it’s not. No one wants to talk about thestruggle, but it happens. I wrote ‘The Night’ in an obviously dark time –andpeople really responded; that song means so much to so many people, I can’ttellyou. But we figured since it had already been out, we didn’t need to includeiton Reckless.”Unprepared for the response to her debut album, the relentlessly touringartistjust kept bringing her music to the people. A stouter kind of country thatneversacrifices lyricism, she spent the fall on the road with Lucero, thehard-driving Memphis-based soul/rock/Americana icons.With “Wilder Days” becoming a SiriusXM Highway Find, then hitting No. 1 ontheirfast-tracking country station, Wade’s song – one of TIME’s 10 Best of 2021inany genre – opened a portal for Americana, alternative and rock fans to anartist straddling the craggy terrain across genres, but also life. Signed toSony Music Nashville by a label head who’d grown up in bands with KimRichey,Byron House and Bill Lloyd, the power of defying genres in the name ofhardertruths inspired Randy Goodman to want to bring Morgan Wade to the biggestaudience possible without compromising what made her so special.As people caught on, the reaction to songs like “The Night,” the ones not onthealbum, created a conversation about what else might not have been includedinher exquisite ten song debut. With as much life lived – Wade formed herfirstband off Craigslist; “my friend and I drove over to this house in a prettyroughpart of town, went down to the basement and found some pretty good players”–and absorbed, she was fearless in documenting her journey.In college, studying medical sciences, she played out after a break-up,performing a song to put it all out there. Without a role model, sheperformedthe same way she learned to sing and write: for herself, to herself. Butwhenshe gigged, something happened. People connected to her alienation, distressandseeking answers for things no one was talking about.“I guess the songs are saying the things they can’t say,” she concedes. “Iseethese big guys crying. I’ve had these great big men come up to me after myshowsto tell me I’m saying what everybody’s thinking.”That drove her forward, bringing Reckless to fruition. The lopingwant-you-nowreality-checking “Matchsticks and Metaphors” with its confession, “if youdon’twant me, that don’t bother me at all/ don’t be upset when I don’t answer ifyoucall...,” the stark Appalachia of “Met You” and the swirling, snapped fingercompulsion beyond drugs or alcohol “Last Cigarette” captivated listeners fortheir white knuckled hold on reality. Like “Wilder Days” – with its j’accuse“You said you hate the smell of cigarette smoke...” hook, which RollingStonecalled “the year’s most irresistible country-rock chorus” – the sense ofmysteryallows listeners room their own lives in her songs.“I’m not naming names,” Wade says, eyes rolling at the idea. “But I’m alwaysforwhatever paths gonna pave the way for the next outcast, the next person whofeels so alone. If the songs speak to the people who need to hear them, itmakesme feel good about having been so vulnerable and honest. When people scream‘Wilder Days’ right back to me or tell me they feel like they have a story,their story in my story, that’s when you know you’re not alone.”To that end, Wade, Vaden and Ebersold talked about what’s next. With songsleftuncut, songs that expand the story, it seemed a shame to move on. “Wedecided wewanted to share some more. Take ‘The Night.’ In concert, people sing thatbackto me as loud as ‘Wilder Days,’ so there were things we wished we couldchange –there’s a B-3 part that got buried in the mix – and this way, we could bringback it into the story. To me, that’s what all of this is... The story ofwhereI was, what I want and where I’m going.”In a nod to Elvis Presley, whose “Suspicious Minds” she’s been scalding livewith a portion of AC/DC’s “You Shook Me (All Night Long)” interjected,Deluxecontains a sizzling rendition that dials up its sexual obsession. At theotherend of the spectrum, there’s “Through Your Eyes,” a chiming power-popperspective shift on her recklessness.“When you have younger siblings, when they say ‘I wanna be like you,’thinkingyou’re so cool, that’s sobering,” Wade explains. “You see all of it in averydifferent light. You know, it’s one thing when you know you shouldn’t, andyoudo it anyway; it’s another when you realize a three-year-old is taking itin.”As for Elvis, “It’s very sacred to cover one of his songs, and I wanted tochoose one I could make my own. I have a lot of younger fans who don’t know,whothink it’s my song, so I love that I can take something and introduce it toanew generation... but we wouldn’t have done it, just to do it.“Vocally, it works for me; it’s got a great range, especially when I hitthatchorus. I’m kind of weird about covers, but when I asked the band, ‘What doyouthink about this?’ They were all in.”Between the road, the critical acclaim, the growing radio believers, Wadeknowsthe future is coming – and intends to be ready. With one foot strongly intherealm of where she’s been, she wrote the tumbling the rollicking “When theDirtAll Settles,” with The Cadillac Three’s Jaren Johnston and “Run” – Vaden aco-writer on both tracks – to find a lighter way to escape the things thatpullyou down. She knows sobriety is a daily battle, that the dark moods andotherissues are a fact of life. But the wide-eyed songwriter also knows how wefacethe day is often up to us. Rather than drowning in boredom or desperation,“Run”is a launching pad, looking both ways and finding whatever escape might befoundin the company of someone outrunning their own sad memories – and thegallopingrunning into the distance “When the Dirt All Settles.”“It was fun, the polar opposite of what I thought [writing with someone newwould be],” she says. “I’ve always written out of emotion, out of themoment, soI had it in my mind you had to be all serious all of the time. But sometimesit’s okay to kind of let go, to just have three minutes to just kick it outandhave some fun. You can keep the honesty, but maybe take it from somewhereelse.”Somewhere else? For Morgan Wade, wherever that is, you can bet it’ll be wildandfree and seeking.“I figure if I keep saying the things I want to say, then people are stillgoingto be thinking them, too. We’re all running into those feelings, so let’sjustget it out in the open where we can let ‘em go.”NEWSLETTER SIGN UPThanks for signing up!©Sony Music Entertainment. All RightsReserved.Send Us Feedback|Privacy Policy|Do Not Sell MyPersonalInformation|Your California Privacy Rights|Terms andConditions |Why Music Matters|Built by 45PRESS